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I’m going back in time a little bit to pick up on an unreported September 5, 2007 decision by a New York state trial court in the case of Whitnum v. Yahoo! [2007 WL 2609825].

Plaintiff Whitnum is the author of the book Hedge Fund Mistress, and also the owner of the website of the same name. Yahoo, who hosted the site, is alleged to have shut down the site for 8 hours on August 19, 2004, which was the same day that the book was mentioned on the front page of the Boston Herald.

Whitnum claimed that this caused her to lose out on $125,000 in revenue, so she sued Yahoo for that amount. Yahoo moved to dismiss, however, citing to its hosting terms of service which provided that it had the right “at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the [hosting] Service.” The terms of service also provided, among other things, that Yahoo would not be liable for any indirect or consequential damages resulting from a customer’s inability to use the service.

The court granted the motion to dismiss. It rejected Whitnum’s arguments that she should be allowed to file an amended complaint alleging intentional conduct or gross negligence, instead finding that her basis for saying that Yahoo may have shut down her account to silence her story about having dated John Kerry was mere speculation.

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago helping businesses and individuals identify and manage issues dealing with technology development, copyright, trademarks, domain names, software licensing, service agreements and other matters involving the internet and new media.

Evan is a partner in the law firm of Much Shelist, P.C. He is an adjunct professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and is a Domain Name Panelist with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).